Remote file access in php causes massive page load delay

iamgregor

For some reason, my local development server is loading with a 20 to 60 second delay on each page. I narrowed it down and discovered that the problem is related to any command that I use that either checks the existence of a remote file (tried file, fopen, etc) or tests the attributes of a remote file (getimagesize).

Is this a PHP or Apache configuration problem? The most annoying part of this is that everything worked fine a few days ago. Since then, all I did was add more posts to my page.

Also, what is the most efficient way to test for the existance of a file? I'm testing remote files that actually exist on my server, but I haven't found a useful way to find the filepath of the file to test it locally.

iamgregor

Almost forgot: Here's one of my error messages:getimagesize(http://localhost/teaser.jpg) [function.getimagesize]: failed to open stream: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond

onicsoft

That means network time out. It is the same as if you were trying to load a webpage, but it wouldn't load and gave you a network time out. It could mean the connection to the image is being blocked or what ever else could cause the connection to time out.

I'm testing remote files that actually exist on my server, but I haven't found a useful way to find the filepath of the file to test it locally.

What, the files are local, but your going http:// to check them? What is the path to the files your checking on your server? A way to get it is create a .php file in the same folder as the images and do the following.

<?php 
echo dirname(__FILE__);
?>

iamgregor

<?php 
echo dirname(__FILE__);
?>

[/QUOTE]

Unfortunately, I don't need the path of the file I'm loading but the path of a file that I send to a function (in this case, images). I think I can use various server variables to work it out, but the main issue is that at some point I will need to call getimagesize to get the width and height of the image. When I do, I'm still stuck with that darned delay. What could possibly be interfering with my page's ability to access images on localhost? And note that they load fine in image tags, it's only the functions (like getimagesize) that cause the issue.

dagon

if the image is on the same server don't use http (remote) just use the file path and name.

iamgregor

dagon;10916951 wrote:
if the image is on the same server don't use http (remote) just use the file path and name.

You're both right. I was being lazy and now I've taken the trouble to figure out the local path on the fly. This will solve all my problems except one. What's a simple way to get an image's width and height values without using the url centric getimagesize?

dagon

getimagesize is the easy way, you could do it once then store the information in a db

iamgregor

Problem solved. It looks like getimagesize works with local or url filepaths so no issue.